[opendtv] Re: Apple dashes hopes of Flash on iPhone
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:50:29 -0400
At 11:43 AM -0700 4/13/10, Kon Wilms wrote:
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Cliff Benham <flyback1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
However, it seems, by articles such as this one and others like it, that
much of the future limitations are more about control, greed and vendettas
than about commerce, performance and consumers. But perhaps I have too
little of information to make an accurate assessment.
Dan, you have it right; you hit the nail on the head.
I think this video best illustrates the problem Apple would be faced
with (complete elimination of vendor lockin):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22vicDlzmkI.
Yup Kon, You hit the nail on the head too!
Certainly no vendor lock in here. One computer (a Mac) that runs the
Mac OS, Windows, Linux, all kinds of browsers, and the COMPLETE Adobe
CS5 creative suite...
It even works with a Dell monitor.
The only lock in here is that you are doing all of this via a
proprietary set of tools from Adobe.
As long as Adobe keeps their proprietary tools up to date, everything
should be fine...
Right?
Not exactly. Jobs is absolutely correct that Flash is a mess on the
Mac platform. It causes more crashes in my Safari browser than ANY
application on my Macbook Pro. In many cases it just locks up the
browser and I must force quit Safari and re-launch it; in other cases
it just crashes and re-launches itself.
Am I against the write once, play everywhere approach?
No. I have been a huge advocate for this.
But EVERYONE would like to lock-in the future (Just look at what the
ATSC did, INCLUDING a government mandate to buy their technology).
The problem comes when somebody gets a little big for their britches
and can use market power to control the marketplace.
It is amusing that Kon (and others) rush to the defense of Microsoft,
when the reality is that that they created and maintain a virtual
monopoly over the PC operating system, office productivity tools and
many of the servers that power corporations and the Internet. I never
heard as much noise as is being created today around the Apple/Adobe
Flash Fire, when Microsoft was creating proprietary server tools that
ONLY worked with Internet Explorer - I had to have a copy of IE on my
Mac just to access many e-commerce web sites.
At least Apple is trying to push the industry in the direction of
open standards.
I seriously doubt that Apple will have any problems with Adobe tools
that cross compile to HTML5. If, that is, Adobe ever decides to stop
pushing its own proprietary Flash "standard" and support this
emerging standard.
Apple is doing NOTHING to prevent Adobe from developing and selling
tools to create web content. They are simply choosing not to support
Flash and asking developers to move to HTML5.
With respect to the iPhone OS, however, they are CONTROLLING the
quality of the applications that they are helping developers to sell.
And they are selling VERY well.
If a developer does not like the rules that APPLE establishes, they
can always develop for competing platforms.
The problem is that Apple is now gaining momentum and market power,
and this really pisses off some folks. Even if these same folks
willingly support similar practices in order to develop for other
platforms (like Windows, PS3, Xbox etc).
As for development and the 'flash apps will kill the device
performance' drivel, note the memory usage stats:
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/device_central.png
And what does this tell us?
I have seen many reports that DO confirm that Flash is VERY
INEFFICIENT on the Mac OS.
How would it do on the iPhone or iPad? I'm not sure. What I can tell
you is that Apple has done a very good job with the iPhone in terms
of performance and battery life. Somehow I believe them more than
Adobe if they tell me that supporting Flash would reduce both
performance and battery life.
What this entire debate tells me is that we still live in a world
where vendors are continuously looking for a competitive advantage.
I have supported Apple through the years because they have (for the
most part) provided a more stable environment for the kinds of
computing applications that I have used and helped to develop.
My iPhone 2G is the best 1st generation device I have ever owned.
The fact that it has been continuously upgraded (at no additional
cost to me) has been a very positive part of the ownership
experience; how many products do you own that periodically add
significant new features?
The world Adobe has created is a bit chaotic and it is very expensive
to maintain your tools. I would note that this is part of the cost of
doing business, and do not begrudge any company charging a fair price
if they keep evolving the product and making me more productive. I
have had problems with other upgrade treadmills that do little except
to force everyone to upgrade, as MS did by constantly changing the
file formats for Office documents.
I am working with the video production subset of Adobe CS3, which
Adobe GAVE me after the 2008 NAB (over the years I did a great deal
to help establish Adobe products in the digital content creation
marketplace). The upgrade to CS5 is $799 - as I say, just part of the
cost of doing business.
With all of this in mind, however, does anyone here think that Adobe
might be trying to control the content creation market? Is there any
advantage to Adobe if they can control the tools used to create
dynamic media content for the Internet and now mobile platforms?
Does anybody here think that Microsoft might have spent a few bucks
trying to kill or minimize Java?
Is anyone concerned whether content created using the tools for
Microsoft's Silverlight works on an iPhone or iPad? Apparently
Microsoft has worked with Apple and it does.
But the big buzz is about the fact that Apple is using its market
power to try and get the industry to move from a proprietary standard
- Flash - to an open standard - HTML5.
It's hard to paint Apple as the bad guy here.
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